The present invention relates to a refrigerator having a compressor incorporated in a machine chamber disposed in a lower part of the refrigerator.
A typical conventional refrigerator of the type disclosed in, for example, Japanese Laid Open Application No. 158473/1980, as shown in FIGS. 1-3, a refrigerator is proposed which includes a refrigerator body 1, defining therein a chamber 20 including a freezing chamber portion and a refrigerating chamber portion with the freezing chamber portion including a freezing chamber door 2 and the refrigerating chamber including a refrigerating chamber door 3 respectively adapted to close a front opening formed in the chamber 20. An outer frame 4 defines a contour of the refrigerator body 1, with the outer frame 4 including a table panel 5, defining a ceiling surface, side panels 6,6, a rear panel 7, a bottom panel 8, and so on. The refrigerator further includes a compressor 9, a drain pan 10, and a condenser 11 for evaporating the drain collected in the drain pan 10. The compressor 9, the drain pan 10, and the condenser 11 are positioned within a machine chamber 12 disposed in a lower part of the refrigerator body 1. A main condenser pipe 13, as shown in FIG. 2, is closely attached to a decorative cover 14 which is utilized as a heat-radiating panel, with a rear cover 15 covering a rear portion of the machine chamber 12. The covers 14 aand 15 are attached to protrusion portions 16 formed on a rear of the refrigerator body 1 so that the covers 14, 15 substantially exist in the same plane. In this case, as shown in FIG. 1, between the rear panel 7 and the covers 14, 15 a heat discharge passage 17 is defined. Accordingly even if the refrigerator body 1 is placed in such a manner that a rear surface of the refrigerator body 1 comes in contact with a wall or the like, the heat discharge pasage is not impaired, so that an air heated through the heat exchange with the condenser 11 and the compressor 9 and a wet air having evaporated from the drain pan 10 as well as an air heated through the heat exchange with the main condenser pipe 13 are discharged to the outside through the heat discharge passage 17.
Accordingly, in a refrigerator of the type described above, a distance corresponding to the depthwise dimension L.sub.1 of the heat discharge passage 17 must be kept from the rear panel 7 of the refrigerator body 1. Consequently, a depthwise dimension of a refrigerator is increased, so that it is difficult to decrease the dimension of the refrigerator. In addition, since the wide rear surface of the refrigerator body 1 is covered with the decorative cover 14, upon passing through the heat discharge passage 17, the high-temperature air heated through the heat exchange with the compressor 9 undesirably heats up the chamber 20 over a wide area to increase the amount of heat leakage into the chamber 20, so that it becomes difficult to reduce the power consumption of the refrigerator. Moreover, the necessity of the rear decorative cover 14 obliges the cost to be high.